Associated blog post date: 18th Apr. 2013, link: http://eklavyasai.blogspot.com/2013/04/nature-and-science-2011-articles-on.html , short link: http://bit.ly/nature-sc
Here is a Jan. 2011 article, "Scientists Fault Universities as Favoring Research Over Teaching", http://chronicle.com/article/Scientists-Fault-Universities/125944/.
It refers an article in Nature, Jan. 2011, "University cuts show science is far from saved", http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110112/full/469133a.html, which states that funds for teaching have been cut in UK universities.
It also refers an article in Science, Jan. 2011, "Changing the Culture of Science Education at Research Universities", http://www.sciencemag.org/content/331/6014/152.summary, by 13 authors from 11 different US universities including MIT, Harvard and Yale, which states, "The reward systems at research universities heavily weight efforts of many professors toward research at the expense of teaching, particularly in disciplines supported extensively by extramural funding". It suggests seven initiatives for ensuring equal commitment of science faculty to their teaching and research missions.
Articles in Nature and Science, both of which are top scientific journals/publications, raising the lack of importance given to teaching, in 2011, clearly shows that research grant money is corrupting academic teaching ideals in the scientifically advanced Western world. Is India going to follow their path and make the same mistakes? Will young Indian students have to endure mediocre and poor teachers due to excessive importance being given to research in Indian universities? I think there is a serious risk of such things already happening and becoming more commonplace in future.
----
A comment on associated blog post:
Ravi S. Iyer wrote on April 19, 2013 at 4:52 PM:
I thought some readers may want to know that I sent a mail a few minutes ago with mostly similar content to the above blog post to appropriate Indian government ministers, top academic administrators, some NAAC executive committee members etc.
----
Associated blog post date: 30th Sept. 2012, last updated on: 2nd Oct. 2012, link: http://eklavyasai.blogspot.com/2012/09/separation-of-teaching-and-research-in.html , short link: http://bit.ly/separation-of
Is it time to have two separate tracks for teaching and research in academia (higher education)?
It seems that some faculty in the USA are talking about separation of teaching and research:
1) A tech. view from Georgia Tech., one of the top US research universities in science and technology here: [link broken in Feb. 2020] http://www.gatech.edu/vision/big-ideas/separate-faculty-tracks-for-teaching-research [Feb. 2020 update: Wayback Machine saved version: https://web.archive.org/web/20130817084850/http://www.gatech.edu/vision/big-ideas/separate-faculty-tracks-for-teaching-research (short link : http://bit.ly/2SLshfh )].
2) A humanities view from a Columbia University Professor Emeritus, Herbert Gans here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/herbert-gans/separate-research-and-tea_b_844575.html [short link: http://bit.ly/separate-r ].
I could be wrong but I think that really seems to be the future for higher education in these times of economic uncertainty worldwide. The online education movement may push strongly for this separation.
In the case of CS and IT graduate/post-graduate degrees (e.g. B.Tech., M.Tech.) where, I presume, there is supposed to be substantial focus on teaching software design and development, excellence in teaching these topics should naturally go hand-in-hand with software contributions - if the teacher of these topics does not practice software engineering/development himself/herself how can he/she be an excellent teacher of software engineering? And what better measure of a teacher's excellence in the practice of software development/engineering than his/her software contribution record?
In my references above to software engineering I mean the actual practice of software design and development which includes, as a small part, study of various software development processes. Sometimes the software engineering subject is considered to be limited to study of software development processes which I think is a big mistake. Such limited view of the subject should be called software engineering process(es) and not software engineering.
Associated blog post date: 17th April 2013, link: http://eklavyasai.blogspot.com/2013/04/india-and-other-emergingdeveloping.html , short link: http://bit.ly/india-and
Prof. Altbach, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Altbach, wrote an article titled, "The overuse of rankings", http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/the-overuse-of-rankings/article4488869.ece, in The Hindu dated March 9th 2013.
In the article Prof. Altbach mentions how top political and other leaders across the world, including India's Prime Minister, give tremendous value to university rankings like the Times Higher Education ranking (officially called World University Rankings), http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-rankings/, and the Shanghai ranking (officially called Academic Ranking of World Universities), http://www.shanghairanking.com/. The article states, "Prime Minister Manmohan Singh recently chastised Indian universities for having no institutions in the “top 200” of the global higher education rankings."
The author of the article digs deeper into the above two rankings. He states that the Shanghai rankings are research based (teaching quality is not measured). The Times Higher education ranking gives research a lot of importance but also tries to factor in teaching quality and internationalization by using "weak proxies" to measure them. The article discusses some more issues related to the rankings.
In its conclusion the author states, "For India, or other developing countries, to obsess about the rankings is a mistake."
There was a response to this article from Mr. Phil Baty, editor, Times Higher Education rankings, "Why this global ranking process matters", http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/why-this-global-ranking-process-matters/article4603259.ece, in The Hindu dated April 11, 2013. Mr. Baty warned that under-using the global rankings would be a bigger problem than overusing it.
Mr Baty wrote that Times Higher Education ranking (measures) "teaching, research, knowledge transfer and internationalisation".
Prof. Altbach wrote another article, seemingly in response to Mr. Baty's article, "Ranking obsessions and India’s educational needs", http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/ranking-obsessions-and-indias-educational-needs/article4620733.ece, in The Hindu dated April 16th 2013.
I am so glad to read the articles from Prof. Altbach, a distinguished educator, questioning the relevance of higher education rankings like Times Higher Education rankings or the Shanghai rankings for the vast majority of Indian universities/colleges (typically regulated by UGC/AICTE). While I am nowhere close to being a knowledgeable person on these matters from a country-wide perspective, it seems to me that his assessment that many of these higher educational institutions (of India) "mainly provide supervision of colleges and teaching in selected postgraduate fields, but perform little if any research" is correct. And, IMHO, there is nothing shameful about it! That's the role they are cut out to play, in terms of the finance available to them, the faculty available and the students they cater to. Teaching alone is not shameful but a very respected calling, IMHO.
I particularly liked him noting how eminent Indians castigate poor quality in Indian higher education. I think it has become a popular sport for India's top politicians. I would have hated to be in the shoes of the academics who had to listen to such castigation without any chance to respond.
Altbach wrote that a small number of competitive research universities is needed by India. I guess the elite IITs, IISc, TIFR etc. have government or other funds support and limited teaching load for its faculty, to shoot for these goals.
Altbach further wrote that overall quality of the higher education system has to be improved significantly, especially its colleges.
I think teaching quality needs a lot of improvement. BTW here is an interesting article about NPTEL tying up with some corporates (Google, TCS etc.) for its free online learning solutions: http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-04-12/news/38490818_1_nptel-technology-enhanced-learning-coursera. They plan to have exams and certification for a fee (the teaching part of the course will be free). That may make it a very interesting option for many young Indians.
I think online education may 'revolutionize' Indian higher education landscape. I feel India is just about ready to get on to the MOOC bandwagon as the Internet has really caught on even in semi-urban India and some parts of rural India as well. If you want to read a short blogpost on why I feel MOOC may revolutionize higher education teaching, which is based on an external link article, you may please visit: http://eklavyasai.blogspot.in/2012/11/napster-mp3-music-industry-disruption.html.
Associated blog post date: 7th February 2014, link: http://eklavyasai.blogspot.com/2014/02/improving-indian-academic-research-have.html , short link: http://bit.ly/improving-in
Today's The Hindu has an article titled, Paralysis in science policies, http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/paralysis-in-science-policies/article5661263.ece. Its lead paragraph states, "Neglect of research in higher education has led to very low research intensity. Ninety per cent of our universities end up as teaching institutes where research is given a low priority for lack of funds"
A few days ago, The Hindu carried an article about the poor employability of Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu engineering graduates, http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Hyderabad/ap-fares-poorly-in-employability-of-engineers/article5639970.ece. I think the article clearly shows that there is a serious teaching, and so graduate employability, crisis in engineering colleges in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. I believe this crisis, to some extent, extends to other streams of education besides engineering, and to other states in India too.
What should universities do now - focus on improving teaching/learning outcomes and so improve employability of graduates and post-graduates (students doing masters' degrees) or focus on improving research? I think there is a conflict between teaching and research in many parts of Indian academia today.
One solution to this conflict/dilemma may be to have separate research-intensive universities and teaching-intensive universities. The teaching and non-research workload of academics in research-intensive universities must be low so that they get enough time to focus on research. The UGC/AICTE regulations for appointment and promotion of such academics must give high weightage to research output of such academics. [Please note that I am excluding the elite higher education institutions like IITs and IISc (and also medical education institutions).] Usually such research-intensive universities would be far more expensive to run than teaching-intensive universities.
The teaching-intensive universities would have high workload of teaching for its academics with some (less) time made available for research too. The UGC/AICTE regulations for appointment and promotion of such academics must give high weightage to learning outcomes for and employability of students taught by such academics. These kind of universities would be less expensive to run.
Of course, there should be migration paths for academics to move from one type of university to the other.
Today, I believe, we have only one set of UGC/AICTE regulations for appointment and promotion of academics of any type of university (research-intensive or teaching-intensive). That leads to situations where academics are denied promotion due to lack of suitable research publication output. Loading an academic with three to four courses of teaching load per semester and additional non-research work, and then upbraiding him/her for lack of good impact factor research publication output, and thereby denying him/her promotion, is not just being unfair, but being exploitative of the poor academic.
It also, unfortunately, in some institutions at least, creates an unhealthy environment for Masters students where they are expected/induced to choose project work that contributes to the academic's/department's research work even when UGC/AICTE regulations, I believe, permit a Masters student to do non-research project work. As an example, a software development project of suitable complexity and size is, I believe, permitted by AICTE regulations/norms (written/unwritten) to be considered as an M.Tech. Computer Science or Information Technology final year project. [Please note that many M.Tech. Computer Science or Information Technology students come from a different stream previous degree background like Production Engg., Electrical Engg., Physics or Mathematics.] Such work would enhance software industry employability prospects of the student. But a research publication output obsession among academics may result in students being advised against doing such software development projects as their M.Tech. project and instead encouraged to do a research project that fits in the area of research done by academics in the department. The latter would contribute to academic research but may not necessarily be what the student needs and/or wants.
Having separate teaching-intensive and research-intensive universities who clearly inform students about their focus may help students choose the right type of university based on their needs and interests and their economic status. The lead paragraph of The Hindu article (Paralysis in science policies) looks down upon universities that "end up as teaching institutes". However, students, especially from poor rural and semi-urban areas, who are desperate for education that makes them employable may find such teaching-intensive universities to be a great blessing, and also find the tuition fees of such less-expensive-to-run universities more affordable. The academic research needs of the country can be primarily met by research-intensive universities who may be given the lion's share of tax payer money for academic research and who may then also be expected to deliver suitable results.
----
A comment from associated blog post is given below.
Ravi S. Iyer wrote on February 22, 2014 at 11:30 AM:
Here's a provacative article: Cut Off Harvard to Save America, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-19/cut-off-harvard-to-save-america.html, by Richard Vedder. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Vedder: "Richard K. Vedder is an American economist, historian, author, columnist, and currently distinguished professor of economics emeritus at Ohio University."
The article mentions that top Ivy league US universities have large endowment funds. It goes on further to say, "Before endowments were large, professors sometimes had to earn their salaries by collecting tuition fees from students. When endowments provided professors a guaranteed salary, the incentive of offering high-quality instruction to paying students largely disappeared."
and
"A student graduating from Yale or Princeton, with their roughly $2 million endowments per student, has a ticket to a well-paying job, while one graduating from the College of St. Joseph in Vermont, with its $29,000 endowment per student, does not. Only 12 percent of the Yale and Princeton students have Pells, compared with 71 percent at St. Joseph." [Ravi: Pells refer to US Federal govt. Pell Grants. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pell_Grant: "Pell Grant is a post-secondary educational Federal grant sponsored by the U.S Department of Education. Enacted to help undergraduates of low-income families in receiving financial aid." The difference between elite and non-elite/commoner colleges in the USA seems to be stark. Perhaps if somebody does (or has done) a similar comparison in India, the difference found between elite and non-elite/commoner college education would be similar.]
Some additional info.
Richard Vedder is the director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, USA. Its mission statement: http://centerforcollegeaffordability.org/about/mission-statement says, "Founded in 2006, The Center for College Affordability and Productivity (CCAP) is dedicated to researching the rising costs and stagnant efficiency in higher education, with special emphasis on the United States. CCAP seeks to facilitate a broader dialogue on the issues and problems facing the institutions of higher education with the public, policy makers, and the higher education community. ..."
---
Associated blog post date: 10th April 2013, link: http://eklavyasai.blogspot.com/2013/04/is-academic-research-grant-money.html , short link: http://bit.ly/is-academic
I think that is the case in many parts of Indian academia. However I do not have "hard data", as of now at least, to backup my view. Money or riches in some form has been an extremely powerful and even corrupting force since time immemorial. But money is also needed to run any show. The way money is spread in a system, slowly but surely, in a vast majority of cases, dictates how the people involved in the system and so the system, will behave over time. The parts of the system that are well funded will attract people and grow, and the parts that are starved of funds will repel people and decay. Academic research grant money has become a great magnet in academia while teaching seems to have become a poor cousin with very little or no grant money going to it. Naturally, most academics gravitate towards research grant money and look down upon "mere" teaching as a menial job.
This article on Forbes.com, written by a US medical science academic gives insight into research grant money influence in US medical science academia. It does not mention anything about a possible impact on teaching though, http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidkroll/2013/01/05/top-10-reasons-being-a-university-professor-is-a-stressful-job/ [short link: http://bit.ly/38whVqc ].
Some notes on it:
2nd point of article: It mentions that some research universities assume that research project grants will cover some percentage of faculty salaries.
[Ravi: My God! Faculty salaries being paid, even partially, by research funding seems to be a pretty scary thing to me. Naturally the focus will shift to getting research funding rather than excel in teaching, but then maybe teaching is not a big deal in a research university.]
3rd point of the article: It mentions that research staff, fellows, editorial assistants etc. have to be paid from research grants. Once the grant is gone, all such staff are gone; the expertise is gone.
[Ravi: This is horrifying. It is like running a business. I have experienced the stress of being a top manager in a start-up software company and worry about lack of business impacting ability to pay salaries of staff. But that I thought was part of start-up manager challenges. I did not realize that a tenured Professor could be having similar challenges that a start-up manager has. BTW both the tenured Prof. and the typical start-up manager would be capable fellows who can get another decent job but the staff working for them may find it difficult to get other decent jobs quickly, and that brings enormous emotional stress to the startup-manager (it had really stressed me out and affected my health with some effects being permanent) and, I guess, the tenured Prof.]
4th point of the article: It mentions that administrators garner some decent percentage of research grant money for indirect costs.
[Ravi: Oh Lord! So the administration chaps will use the extra money for their stuff (which may be very much needed for the institution). No wonder, university administrators, even in India, put immense pressure on faculty to do research. It is the money that research projects bring in, not only to a particular Lab. but also to the university administration that matters. Hmm. IMHO, there is a great danger of teaching ideals in universities being pushed somewhere to the corner by the pressure and power of research grant money. I have not heard of Indian government/UGC/AICTE giving teaching grant money - only research grant money. No wonder academics nowadays seem to be bothered mainly about research. I mean, if I were a regular/paid academic in a typical "research-intensive" academic institution that is what I would have to do too - focus on research grant projects and somehow manage the teaching stuff ensuring that there are not too many complaints.]
--end notes on Forbes.com article--
In India, NAAC accreditation, http://www.naac.gov.in/, of universities & colleges has become a big thing, at least in the last decade or so, I think. Perhaps it is the only official way to differentiate between various UGC/AICTE universities in the country. I was surprised when I was informed some months ago by a recently passed out MBA student from a UGC/AICTE university, that its higher NAAC grading resulted in MBA recruits from that university being put in a higher pay bracket by some large company! So the HR guys of companies may be using NAAC ratings to decide fresher pay. I had also recently read a report of a state education minister using NAAC grading to differentiate between good and poor universities/colleges.
From what I understand of NAAC examination visits, the NAAC committee examiners focus on high impact factor journal publications. They are disdainful of conference publications! Of course, they look at various other criteria too. But high-impact factor publications is what really impresses them. I got the impression that they don't really give that much importance to quality of teaching - perhaps the problem there may be lack of availability of a standard, objective & official measure for quality of teaching like an impact factor for a research journal. But does that mean that a higher education official assessment and accreditation council can simply ignore teaching quality?!!! Perhaps Indian academia and NAAC can learn something from corporate training companies in India who focus only on teaching and, at least in the case of some famous software training institutes, have been an astonishing success over decades. They use student/participant feedback as one vital measure of teaching quality as viewed by the customer/student. As far as I know, such student feedback collection in Indian academia is quite rare, as of now.
I think NAAC introduces a fear factor for universities to engage in high-quality research that produces high-impact factor publications. Or else the university will not get a great NAAC rating/grade. So academic administrators desirous of having a good NAAC rating/grade have to push faculty to do high-quality research.
Another aspect of academic research is the "marketing hype" associated with large financial size research grant. Academics talk about the size of the research grant like how in the software consultancy industry, the financial size of an order is talked about. Larger the size, more the prestige and a large research grant is seen as a stamp of quality. I think the view is that bagging a large research grant is a reflection of the capability of the academics involved, as if they were not capable enough they would not have been given a large grant. I had checked with one or more international CS academics a few years ago, and they had concurred that large size of research grant is viewed as a kind of stamp of quality even abroad.
So senior faculty are actively "encouraged" to apply for research project grants. Getting a grant is celebrated like how bagging a project order is celebrated in industry! In very sad and marked contrast, teaching excellence is almost ignored! As teaching excellence does not bring in any large teaching grant money! That, I think, clearly shows the power of money to influence a system.
Okay, so what can be done to give teaching excellence its rightful share in Indian academia? IMHO, there should be substantial teaching grant money and further there should be an appropriate balance between teaching grant money and research grant money, given the type of educational institution involved (teaching-intensive or research-intensive). NAAC assessment/rating also should have a similar balance between measures of teaching quality and research quality.
-----
Given below are comments from associated blog post.
Ravi S. Iyer wrote on April 16, 2013 at 12:43 PM:
I can empathize with the anonymous gunning as well as petty vendettas in academia mentioned in point 1 of the Forbes.com article by David Kroll from some personal experiences that I have had on the suffering side of the anonymous gun and vendetta :).
----
Ravi S. Iyer wrote on April 17, 2013 at 12:44 PM:
I thought some readers may want to know that I mailed out the contents of the above blog post to appropriate Indian government ministers, top academic administrators, some NAAC executive committee members etc., on April 12th 2013. I have also included below the preamble I had in the mail.
I write this mail to you esteemed gentlemen out of concern about lack of importance given to teaching quality in UGC/AICTE regulated higher educational institutions in India, which are the vast majority of higher educational institutions in the country. The elitist IITs, IISc etc. are a special group which is very well funded by the Government of India - I am not referring to them at all in this mail. My concern is about the "commoner" higher educational institutions in the country. I must also add that my focus is on teaching quality in higher education which, in my humble opinion, is very different from quality of academic research in general (teaching/pedagogy research and related areas are an exception).
The views expressed in the mail below may be rather unusual. But they are the views that I have formed over a period of nearly a decade of free service of teaching software lab. courses and acting as a technical consultant for project work of M.Tech. (Computer Science) students in a deemed university in India, and also an Internet based study of the higher education world over the past two years or so. I am a software consultant and so an (ex) industry man - not an academic. My views are that of an outsider who has observed the system closely for around a decade. However, I may be wrong. So I welcome rebuttals and criticisms of this mail which may help me to correct my views, if they